I have three sons all aged under six. This makes it hard for my wife & I to watch the occasional DVD and then reflect on its meaning.

Last week we actually had the perfect storm. Baby asleep, two elder boys engaged enough for us to watch ‘The Company Men’.
 
It’s not a perfect film, given its redemption plot and positive ending against the truly negative backdrop of the American economy. The global news has been dominated by the debt ceiling debate. It did have some powerful themes, largely unspoken in the wider artscape of the US story which have long-term ramifications for the global economy.

A confluence of events happened around this personal viewing of a DVD...

I was following China Gorman on Twitter. China describes herself as a ‘Business leader, public speaker, free agent and supporter of all things HR’ and was until last week the COO of SHRM. Last week she transitioned to a senior role with RiseSmart.

RiseSmart describes itself on China Gorman’s own site as follows:

RiseSmart is a leading provider of next-generation outplacement solutions. The company leverages a cloud-based technology platform, proven methodologies, and one-on-one support to help employers with their workforce strategy, and displaced employees with their career strategy. RiseSmart drives significant ROI to organizations by offering affordable pricing while reducing unemployment insurance taxes and severance costs. RiseSmart has received a wide range of awards and recognition from organizations including Red Herring, TiE, the Stevie Awards, SiliconIndia, the San Francisco Business Times and the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. For more information, visit http://www.RiseSmart.com.

Why would this employment transition relate to the script of the ‘The Company Men’?

For me, one of the strongest points of the film was when the second round of redundancies (coined company downsizing as part of the movie) happened when Bobby who is in an outplacement centre and going no-where is passed by his secretary and one of his senior managers (Phil). Both are completely gutted by the experience of being put on the corporate scrap heap. Phil later commits suicide due, in-part, to his age, high debt exposure & redundant experience in a lessened US economy.

The third and last confluence of factoids in the past week concluded when earlier this week I had the opportunity to listen to a rebroadcast of a February 2010 lecture by the Nobel Prize winning Joseph Stiglitz when he presented at the London School of Economics & Political Science on his latest book, FreeFall. His main points which link to labour issues within the United States included (remember this lecture was last year):

• Unemployment remains high (Feb 2010 was 9.6% - June 2011 is 9.2%)
• Discouraged workers were a significant problem. He discussed the issues around those that don’t look for work don’t qualify as unemployed, that 1 out of 5 men in the US who want employment can’t get re-employed and that Afro-American unemployment is close to 50%. I’m not American so I’ll put up a blog by the Twitter hammer @lruettimann titled ‘Job Boards & The Discrimination of Long-Term Unemployed’. The real impact of what Joseph & Laurie talk about now is that if you are long-term unemployed (more than six months) you are less likely to be re-employed or if you are you are employed in a lower waged position.
• Housing is now a big factor in the US for two reasons:
      o The first is that it now impacts on the traditional US national mobile workforce which could move from city to city. It now can’t move as readily given that the housing market has depressed on aggregate by 30% (more in some cases). It’s also worth noting that China & her husband have moved over 12-times during their careers, an option largely closed off to many Americans for the last couple of years and perhaps another decade.
     o The second big issue is that Small to Medium Enterprises cannot access reasonable credit given that their private or commercial value have decreased significantly, that the Obama government has targeted large enterprises for bailout support and that for all the benefits of Quantitive Easing I & II have been banked rather than deployed to the larger economy. impacts on lending decisions significantly.

My POV is that for all the accolades and nice words about China Gorman’s new position the reality for real people is that outplacement = sacked employee’s! It's also an obscene $3Bn per annum USD industry. This means that someone with a unique position to understand the US economy, the HUMAN RESOURCES implications and that market has decided to not use her position to keep people in employment but to make money from people being unemployed.

Perhaps China should adopt the acronym HM (Human Misery) rather than HR (Human Resources).

Given the dire nature of the US economy and China’s unique corporate knowledge of the HR market in the United States it seems that she is taking the dollars over the best interests of her fellow Americans.

Response by China Gorman (3 August 2011):

Despite what you see in the movies, outplacement firms don’t decide who loses their job. Once those decisions are made by the org, outplacement consultants – paid for by the org - focus on providing a pathway to new employment. Statistics are clear that laid off employees who engage with an outplacement provider & utilize their resources are re-employed much more quickly. RiseSmart’s clients, for example, are in new jobs 54% faster than the market average (www.risesmart.com). Not a bad service.

Shane Granger is a pseudo-intellectual, neo-Taylorist, analyst & occasional writer. A Workforce-Planner in the real world he is also a lover of euro-style beer, cricket and the occasional hike with his young sons. He manages the Regional Workforce Planning LinkedIn forum promoting better outcomes for our global regional centres and can be lauded or abused on Twitter @gmggranger…